number 34 • Winter 2018

The Public Interest

A new vision for city schools

Winter 1996

YES, there is hope for urban education. A wave of reform is spreading from city to city and state to state. Rather than aiming to alter isolated practices or to fix one piece of a jerry-built system, these changes are meant to transform the basic character of public schooling. When taken together, the ambitious range of initiatives currently under way can be structured into an integrated program for reforming urban education—one that shifts from a bureaucratic system that prizes compliance to a deregulated system that focuses on student performance.